[ 2 min read ]

CHRISTOF (to Truman): You can leave if you want. I won’t try to stop you. But you won’t survive out there. You don’t know what to do, where to go.

Christof is like most parents in this world.

He’s come to believe some bullshit superhero story about himself. He thinks he is Batman and Truman is Gotham City.

Gotham depends on Batman for its survival. It is helpless without him. Won’t survive. In other words Batman is Gotham’s only hope.

He thinks (erroneously!) that Truman will not survive in this world without him. That he needs to tell him what to do, where to go, because otherwise Truman might get lost and if that happens he’ll be doomed.

Like most parents he wants Truman to retrace his steps cause it’s safer that way.

CHRISTOF: in my world you have nothing to fear.

The unknown always scares us. Things that are familiar to us, on the other hand, don’t — they became our comfort zone and we feel good knowing what we can expect. We feel at ease knowing what our lives will be like.

Risky moves, surprises, untested new approaches, better steer clear of that shit. The path they’re suggesting to their children has been tried by them and most of their peers and they can walk them through life safely.

Meaning, nothing will ever surprise them, they won’t discover anything new, they will repeat old patterns of behavior and never even ponder doing anything differently.

They’ll follow the same script and have similar results. They’ll develop the same anxieties, insecurities and fears. Then they’ll pass this crap down to their own children.

People who follow the script and never get lost (like really lost), never find anything new.